This invention relates to weather seals or stripping for door and window openings as they are constructed in buildings and the like. Conventional door and window jambs vary in type, there being casement doors and windows, double hung windows, and sliding doors and windows etc. It is wooden door and window jambs with which this invention is particularly concerned, those that can be routed for the reception of a continuous seal installed to be effective between the jamb and the moveable door or window, it being a general object of this invention to provide a weather strip seal installation in existing as well as new construction. This invention is characterized by a routed channel and a seal configuration adapted to wooden jambs, headers or sills, whether new or old. However, it is an object of this invention to provide a seal equally useful for metal construction.
Door and window openings are constructed of a frame comprised of spaced jambs extending upward from a sill and joined at the top by a lintel or header. In casement doors and windows there is a door stop or slamming stop, which is a strip or projecting surface against which the door or window closes. And, it is this stop with which this invention is particularly concerned, since the stops of the header and sill join at right angular corners with the stops on the jambs, and heretofore it has been difficult if not impossible to rout into such corners for the installation of a continuous weather strip seal. The face of the stop is right angularly related to the face of the jamb, and it is an object of this invention to rout a seal groove disposed in a plane to bisect the right angularly related planes of said two faces. Accordingly, a routing tool is provided in accordance with my copending application Ser. No. 07/438,191, filed Nov. 20, 1989 and now issued as U.S. Pat. No. 4,993,897, with a guide that simultaneously follows the faces of the stop and jamb or header, and also provided with means to advance and to retract a specially shaped cutter into and out of working position that continuously routs an elliptically undercut groove at a compound angle into and bisecting the corner established by said two faces.
Heretofore, seal strips with dart-shaped anchors have been installed under the aforementioned stop and jamb condition, by routing dovetail grooves receiving a seal anchor of complementary shape. However, these seals have not been entirely secure. With the present invention a discrete compound angle of the cutter is advantageously utilized and coordinated with the barrel length of the cutter to create an adequate shoulder at each side of an elliptically undercut groove of dart-shape configuration. The opposite anchor shoulders are a developement of the inclined cutter's flutes that converge to a point so as to cut a dart-shaped groove (see FIG. 3).
It is an object of this invention to provide a continuous weather strip seal which is versatile and adapted to different door and window situations. That is, the moveable doors and windows may or may not be installed or removed, some are of the casement type while others are of the sliding type, and the construction to be improved with seals might be old or new.
It is also an object of this invention to provide for angular advancement of the routed channel into and continuously through the corners established by the right angularly related jambs, headers and sills. A feature of this seal is its reliable securement and continuation through continuing angularly related corner channels.